


Cross the Night Sky of an Unknown Galaxy

by anistarrose



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode: s02e11 Not What He Seems, Gen, Stangst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-14 15:46:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18951154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anistarrose/pseuds/anistarrose
Summary: First, Stan is afraid that the kids don’t trust him.Then, he’s afraid that Mabel trusts him more than he deserves, and he’s going to lose her because of it.





	Cross the Night Sky of an Unknown Galaxy

**Author's Note:**

> Not adhering to a particular [Month of Maybel](https://themonthofmaybel.tumblr.com/) theme, but it’s definitely Mabel-centric so I’m going to count it! Also something of a Not What He Seems tribute, as well as a bit of a style experiment at points. I love my sweater-wearing daughter and all of her shooting star imagery.

Sagan said famously that we are all made of star stuff — but that shared heritage is more evident in some of us than others. Mabel Pines is one such person, from which the origins of all life’s shared building blocks shine through most brilliantly.

Stan watches helplessly as she clings to the shutdown switch, his back smashed up against a crumpled ventilation pipe that spews steam as his fez threatens to lift off his head. His stomach tries to climb into his throat once again, just like when he’d arrived back at the Mystery Shack with burning lungs and trembling legs only to find the vending machine swung wide open and the passageway exposed — dusty six-fingered handprints and all, laid bare after thirty long years for anyone to see.

Mabel makes a fist, and time crawls nearly to a halt as she lowers it towards that pulsating red button, the one thing standing between Stan and fixing the worst mistake of his life, between Stan and bringing Ford back into this world where he would be _safe_ , he would be _home_ , he would be able to meet his great-niece and nephew —

“I wanted to say that you’re gonna hear some bad things about me —”

The fist stops, and two eyes — still wet with tears — turn upwards to meet Stan’s.

“And some of them are true! But trust me, everything I’ve worked for, everything I care about — it’s all for this _family_!” The whole basement feels like it’s crumbling around Stan, as the portal spews lightning like the maw of some cosmic dragon.

“Mabel, what if he's lying?” Dipper cries out. “This thing could destroy the universe! Listen to your head!”

“Look into my eyes, Mabel!” Stan begs, and Mabel does, lightning bolts weaving around her like even they’re on the edge of their seats, desperate to see what she’ll do. “You really think I’m a bad guy?”

“He’s lying! Shut it down, _now_!”

“Mabel, please!”

The electricity retreats back into the portal abruptly, and the columns of light flanking the portal each condense into a dozen pure blue beams stretching from floor to ceiling. Mabel closes her eyes as her flattened palm drifts towards the button, the portal a multicolored hurricane behind her with a star-dotted void as its eerily calm eye.

“Grunkle Stan…”

She looks away… and then _lets go_ , drifting up towards the storm and towards the void, like a shooting star crossing the night sky of an unknown galaxy. She holds her arms helplessly above her head in a solemn gesture of faith, exposing the key design on her sweater.

“ _I trust you_.”

Stan’s pounding heart skips a beat and his mouth goes dry as space distorts around him like a wave, and his greatest fear abruptly shifts from _she’ll shut it down and everything I’ve worked for will be for nothing_ to _she’ll fall in and everything I’ve worked for will end with losing her too_ —

The portal lights up like a supernova, and Stan’s vision goes all white except for the shards of glass from a shattered picture frame. They drift past his face, coming inches away from cutting his cheeks, and in them he can imagine reflections of a hundred different scenes, different realities playing out at the portal — Mabel falling in, Stan himself falling in, no one falling in but a horrific creature with maliciously gleaming eyes and flaming golden tongues pulling itself out with long, spiderlike legs —

A force strikes him from the front, in his chest, yet somehow throws him _forwards_ , before normal gravity resumes and he plummets to the ground, breath knocked out of him. He rises to his hands and knees slowly, terrified to face what he may have just done, but when he opens his eyes to see both Mabel and a familiar cloaked figure — grey-haired, broad-shouldered, and six-fingered — standing in front of him, a weight lifts off his shoulders for the first time in thirty years.

***

Mabel isn’t too worried when Stan comes to sit next to her while she knits — his eyes aren’t flickering from side to side in that confused, uncomfortable way that she’s come to recognize throughout the past few days, and he’s been improving a lot recently anyways. He hasn’t had any relapses for over a day, at least as far as she knows.

But when he puts his arm over her shoulders and she hears his breath hitch in his throat, she can’t help but panic, as much as she tries to hide it for Stan’s sake.

“Grunkle Stan? What’s wrong?”

“I’m okay, pumpkin,” he whispers quickly, though his tone doesn’t do much to assuage Mabel’s worries. “I just… I remembered getting Ford back?”

He phrases it like a question, like he’s not sure whether it really happened, and Mabel just can’t bear to hear it.

“Do you want to talk to him? Wait right there, I’ll go get him for you — he just went outside with Dipper, but I’m sure they couldn’t have gotten far —”

“No, it’s — it’s fine. _I’m_ fine, and… I think I probably should talk to him _sometime_ , about… things, but —”

He finally makes eye contact with her, and she realizes that his eyes are tinted red.

“I want to talk to _you_ , Mabel,” he tells her, resting his hands on both her shoulders. “ _Why_ did you have to let go of the lever? I thought you were gonna fall in, and I was gonna lose you too…”

“Oh, I — I’m —”

Mabel dives forwards, wrapping her arms around him. 

“I’m so _sorry_! I didn’t realize I scared you, I never meant to —”

“No, it’s okay…” Stan pats her on the head, slowly and carefully. “You gave me a heart attack, but you also got me my brother back…”

His voice drops to a low murmur. “I don’t know why you trusted me. _I_ wouldn’t have trusted me.”

“I — I almost _didn’t_ , Grunkle Stan,” Mabel whispers, burying her face in his shoulder. “I almost thought you were the bad guy, and that you wanted to destroy the world — and it still keeps me up at night sometimes even though Grunkle Ford tells me it shouldn’t, ‘cause I almost took your brother away from you!”

She hasn’t told this to anyone but Ford himself before, when they crossed paths after a recent nightmare of hers, and she doesn’t know if getting it off her chest to Stan will make her feel better or make them both feel worse — but once she starts talking, it all spills out.

“But I… I thought about you protecting us from the zombies and the pterodactyl, and I remembered all the Stancakes you made us and all the times you did illegal stuff right in front of us without bothering to hide it, and — and how worried you always got when Dipper told stories about a monster that almost really hurt us — and I knew that I couldn’t —”

“ _Thank you_ ,” Stan interrupts her — no anger or disappointment in his voice, just gratitude and relief. “Thank you so much, Mabel.”

“Even though I almost didn’t trust you?”

“No, I think… you trusted me just the right amount.” Stan says, hugging her tighter. “Even though I wish you didn’t let go of that lever.”

“Is everything alright?” Ford pokes his head in the room, brow furrowed in concern. 

“Yeah, it is,” Stan told him, “thanks to Mabel, as usual.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, comments are welcomed as always! If you liked this one, you might also like [this fic I wrote for Forduary,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18000302) where Ford and Mabel talk about some related topics.
> 
> (In the process of writing the scene, I realized it might not make much sense for the picture of Dipper and Mabel from Stan’s desk to end up in front of his face while the portal is activating, but gravity can distort space so let’s just say some weird scifi stuff happened to that picture and that’s why it’s not where it should be.)


End file.
